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How to Draw a Night Sky with Soft Pastels | Real Time Tutorial

Mar 24, 2024
Peace everyone a mask here and welcome once again to another livestream

tutorial

with

pastels

so again this is the pastel pack that I'm going to be using and I'm also going to be using a 12 pack of Fab Castel pencils uh just a little bit . bit H so let's go ahead and get started the paper I'm working on is the Clare Fontaine pastel mat this is the color Sienna uh hi Karen thanks for joining the live chat that's about to start let me hit record on my camera

real

quick so we can save this as a

time

lapse, so the first thing we're going to do is just pour a bunch of color all over this paper because we're going to make a starry

night

skin scene, however, since I'm going to make a silhouette on top, I don't want the background to be completely black, so I'm going to use charcoal, uh, gray, so this is a dark gray color and I'm going to cover most of the document here, so now we're going to start incorporating some of the colors.
how to draw a night sky with soft pastels real time tutorial
Hi Monica, thank you for joining the live chat and watching the live stream. So the first color I'm going to incorporate a little bit of this beautiful blue. I'm just going to doodle these colors. Feel free to add them wherever you want. You don't have to be exact. Let's mix them all together. take this out and it will look great so have fun with it and put it where you think the color should be, don't pay too much attention to where I'm putting it just have fun and make a mess. on your paper for now, I'm going to go a little bit lighter blue, this is a very bright light blue, so I'm going to pull a little bit of this in here as well and all of this will be a little blurry

soft

ened, okay, now I'm going to take a little bit of this kind of turquoise green color and I'm going to start incorporating it into the paper a little bit, as you can see, it's clearly a big mess.
how to draw a night sky with soft pastels real time tutorial

More Interesting Facts About,

how to draw a night sky with soft pastels real time tutorial...

Now it's okay because once we blend it out it will look

real

ly good. Now this is a much lighter green color and I'm just going to put some dots where it will be nice and bright. let's continue with another layer of the blue that we started with, just add a little bit more of that in some areas, we're also going to bring in a little bit of the darker blue color, darker, but almost purple, which we're just going to put a little bit of that in there as well , just in some of the darker spots, once we blend that out, we're going to get a much better view of what's happening on this paper and you can see I'm avoiding the background here and that's just because I'm going to make a silhouette on the bottom similar to the thumbnail of this video.
how to draw a night sky with soft pastels real time tutorial
Hi Oliver, thanks for joining us to watch from Ireland. That's great. Malia. Hello from Germany. Thanks for coming. So now I'm leaving. To take my finger and mix all these colors together, this will be the first layer, so don't expect the pigment to cover the entire paper, but there's no reason to be gentle here, just rub your finger and mix those pigments together. the best you can, once we add more layers, it will cover the paper much better. There's no real technique here, just mix all that pigment together. I didn't put much. I didn't put much chalk. the paper, so it's going to be a little grainy in these first few layers, so let's go back again with our charcoal gray color and we're going to do a little bit harder layers and make sure that this

time

we can cover all of the paper.
how to draw a night sky with soft pastels real time tutorial
I'm going to avoid highlights because I want to fill them with more color. Now we're just going to go over our colors again, so I'm going to take that kind of dark blue squiggle there and then I'm going to switch to my Li light blue, lighter blue, bright blue, I'm just going to bring this color back here and really I'm scribbling all over the paper, which I think is pretty obvious, let's bring in some of that green color and just have it cross the sky a little bit and a little bit of that really bright green in some spots now, once you start adding some More layers of these, the pigment won't spread as much, so be a little bit. a little more precise with where you are going to put this color correctly.
I'm just going to blend this and see what I have, see where I need to add a little bit more pigment, see that the colors are starting to get a little bit

soft

er and We're starting to have a little bit softer blend with all the colors, but It's still quite complicated with this paper, we can add all kinds of layers and things like that, so don't be afraid, you know, don't be afraid if it looks really messy at this point because it's going to look messy for quite a while. There we go, hello, hello, big bass.
Arts, thanks for joining the live stream, let's see, so we're going to go back and add a little bit more. of our charcoal gray and just get those darker, uh, darker spots. I want to make sure I have a nice border where my ribbon is, so I want to cover the entire paper. You're really going to put this pigment down just to cover all of this charcoal. The gray is going to desaturate these bright colors, so when I mix it, the colors won't be as vibrant and bright, so I'll have to add more layers on top, but for now I'm going to do that.
Go back to that dark violet blue color and just add a little bit around the edges that way, it's not completely charcoal black and it has some of that dark blue look that makes the sky look nice and deep. This is just going to bring back some of the color in the sky and we're going to change to that light blue again and I'm just going to go over and add a little bit here and there, not too much. I'm going to switch back to the slightly darker blue. and just get a little bit, put some of that back into the sky and also highlight, get a nice transition between dark and light with this medium blue, there we go and I'm going to go ahead and blend this and see how it looks. what it looks like and then build from there so the gray starts to get to where these lighter colors are and it's desaturating it quite a bit so it's good to know that it's good to blend it and know where I want to add those colors back this medium is so forgiving that you can just scribble and mix it with the charcoal when I mean charcoal I only mean this color because it's not black on camera, I don't know how black this looks, but it's a shade brighter than black, and I call it charcoal because charcoal isn't really black, it's kind of a grayish color, so it's like the third block in my backpack here, so yeah, it's just not black.
I'm saving the black for the silhouette that I'm going to put on the front because I want that contrast, so I still need a little bit of the dark gray or charcoal that I keep referring to, so I need to get some. of that back there because there are still some little spots that I want to cover, so I'm just going to add a little bit of that again and I'm going to change to that very dark violet blue color and Go above that. I apologize if the paper scraping comes through the microphone. I hope it's not that bad.
Now I'm going to switch to that medium blue, go back to the medium blue and work on some of these. trans uh, these transitions between the bright spots and the dark spots are just going to add a little bit of everything right now. I've got quite a bit of dust here, so I'm going to blend this up and make sure all my paper is covered where I want it, I'm making it horizontal because I think it hides better in the sky instead. I suppose you could make circles if you wanted, but instead avoid the vertical lines, but the circles are quite pretty and also so horizontal. o Circle and you can see how smooth everything is right now, everything is blending together really well and that's just after a few layers of cake.
I realized, so as I mentioned at the beginning, I'm working on the Clare Fontaine pastel mat. I previously worked on uart 600 paper and I realize that the number of layers I need to apply to get full coverage on the paper I need to do a few more layers on this paper instead of the uart ones, but I think that's just because when you scrape the cake onto the uart paper as it's quite thick, and you get sandpaper, you get more dust to scrape off, so that could be the reason ok? I'm going to go over I'm going to add some of my blues and greens back into this sky and I'm being a lot more thoughtful about how I'm doing it.
I'm making small circles because I'm nice. to create those ghostly clouds that you get in space, so I'm going to make little circles, add them in various locations and try to create some space effect, so just semi circles. Cloud things. they'll fade out, but these shapes will stay in place for a little bit, just a little bit of that blue and I'm going to change right into this kind of teal color, do the same effect and just create some clouds there. Go and I'm going to blend this out before I highlight and I don't move my finger much.
I'm just moving in a small circle and just barely brushing it. because I want those clouds to pop out a little bit, I don't want to lose the detail that I've

draw

n, so I'm going to keep a subtle touch and a little circular motion and we're just going to blend all of that together and add some more of the brighter blue colors, as well as getting a little bit more saturation in these darker areas, making it more blueish, a little bit too gray for me anywhere you see something. Some of the details show up a little bit more than you want, just rub them with your finger a little more firmly with a little more pressure and they'll blend in nicely, so I'm going to add a little bit of this, uh, this brighter blue .
It was like medium blue. I'm going to go over and add some hints of darker dark clouds in the background. I'm even going to add some of the more purple blue too. This is going to be type u let's see here what purple I want okay so this is a pure color like pure grape purple color and I'm going to go ahead and once I mix these colors together it's going to become what I want some purple . Here you can add all kinds of fun colors to your space scene. There really are no limitations. Here you can add instead of blues, purples and greens, you can use warmer reds, oranges and more. colors but I wanted to do a kind of soft space scene with blues and stuff, okay, I'm going to go ahead, okay, now I'm going to go ahead with an ultramarine blue, this is a very blue blue, let's just go. through and add a little bit add some kind of saturation to those those darker charcoal spots want a lot of color in the sky uh, so ask real quick: is there no other way than your finger to blend?
Yes, there are many other ways to mix. I have some. mixing tools that come to me in the mail, uh, and they haven't arrived yet, so I'm stuck with my fingers, um, but you can use them as a mixing stump, which I don't actually prefer that the mixing stump didn't. It works fine for me, although it could have been that I was working on the uart paper, but I like it, I like the finger. I have a lot of control with my finger. One of the downsides is that, um, it's a little messy, but I have a little paper towel here to wipe my finger, but there are some sponges, and they're made specifically because you don't want to use regular sponges because, if you use a regular sponge, just pick up the pigment correctly. of the paper, you don't want to use brushes because, as I learned in my first experience with

pastels

, it also removes the pigment from the paper, which you know can be useful sometimes, but not for blending.
It's not useful for mixing, but yes, there are mixing tools you can buy online designed specifically for cakes, so you don't have to use your fingers; However, if you're just picking up cake bars, your fingers are going to get dirty anyway, so there's really no easy way around it, make a bit of a mess, cakes are messy you know, so you can't avoid it too much. , so I really like the way these colors are displayed. I like the softness I like some of the details that are starting to appear I want to add I want to add more vibrancy and shine to some of these dots so I'm just going to go over and I'm going to create sort of lightning bolt shapes that I'm going to blend out, so I'm making wavy lines like lightning and when I blur them I'm going to have kind of brighter lights appearing. which is exactly what I want, it's going to look a little weird while I'm

draw

ing it, but when I blend it, those details are going to fade out and create spots of light that I want to be very soft and now I'm just going to blend that in little circles and stuff, as you add more layers the pigment tends to blend less and the more you draw the details the more they stay where they are placed, they don't tend to blend as much. a lot in this layering process at this point in the drawing process the details tend to stay where they are once you put them on top of another pigment that has already been pushed into the tooth of the paper, yes this is the CLA Fontaine pastel mat.
All the exact names of the supplies I'm using are in the video description, so if you want to check it out, you can, so I've got it. I have a bit of detail in the sky now, so there is a bit of visual interest when you look at the sky. It's not just random colored blobs, it has some shape to it, now some of the details, like I said, some of the details that are showing too much just rub them a little more firmly and they will smooth out CU. I don't want these lines to be too different.
I want them to have this feeling of fading like they're glowing because What I'm going to do now is take the really light green that I used and I'm going to do the same thing. I'm just going to create brighter spots in these areas and create some of those types of light. of shapes, there will be a nice bright spot hereup and then there will just be some threads of light coming out of it and none of these, none of these shapes have anything in particular, they're just random. just random shapes the sky will come to life once you start adding the stars to them so a quick question is this sanded paper.
No, this paper is not sanded, as far as I know, it's just uh clar Fontaine pastel mat. I don't know if yes. it's described as sanded honestly it feels very soft um something like uh something like velvet or um I don't know like a very fine cloth like a bunch of thread I don't know if it's described as sanded or if it is sanded, it's a very nice paper , although I'll be honest here after switching from the pastel mat on the uart and then back and forth, um, I might lean a little more towards using the U sandpaper.
Hi. Alex, thanks for joining the live stream. I'm glad you can, so this is the reference I'm using for this, it's something I created in Photoshop, but it's barely a reference because it's kind of what I. What I'm drawing here is more of a color reference than a shape reference or something. The silhouette is going to be a little more based on a reference than what I generated in Photoshop, but for this I don't do it. I wouldn't need a reference to create a Spacey Sky scene because it's really just two steps, creating sort of hazy blobs of color, blending them very gently like I'm doing here, and then creating the stars on top. and that's really it, there's not much you need to do after that, so I'm just adding more light color into my highlights just to make them brighter.
I'm even going to incorporate a little white. so they really look bright and I'm going to add a little bit of white on the other spots as well just to brighten them up a little bit and then a little bit of green on top so it's not too white, mix that well. After this I think it's pretty good. I like this sky where it is. I'm going to go through it and I'm just going to add some stars now and I haven't really developed a technique for the stars, so let's do it. Some experiments just to see what would be best, so the question is: am I overcoming my texture issue?
Because if you've been following me for a while, you know that I don't like texture, that I'm a huge anti-texture. and when it works when it comes to working with pastels you have no choice but the texture that I get with the sanded paper on the pastel mat um it doesn't affect me I mean mostly painting like I paint I hate the texture of the canvas um so yeah. okay, so what we're going to do, what we're going to try first is just take the white stick and try to add points and it looks like it's set.
Really very good, very bright, but as you can imagine, this will take a considerable amount of time to add all these points to this scene. Unfortunately, I don't know any other way. I have a knife here. Could do it. I tried scraping it off but I'm afraid it will turn into fine dust instead of stars in the sky, so I think I really like the way it looks, I'm just using the corner and just touching it. paper I'm not using a lot of pressure because it doesn't really take much uh I guess the positive thing about doing it like this is that I don't really have to pay attention to what I'm doing so I can continue a conversation and just touch the paper if you can let me Know in the comments if these stars appear because they are quite good and some of the brightest points, it is always good to form a group of stars together there, thank you.
You, Jen, I appreciate the compliment. I seem to get that compliment quite often lately, especially, so I appreciate it. Yes, then touching the stars is quite boring and time-consuming. One of the things you'll want to do is Not only will you want to make all your stars in space or in space, yes, you'll want to make all your stars in space, but you'll want to use other colors instead of just white, so I'm going to let myself use a nice yellow color too and since I have two hands, I'm just going to tap back and forth and do this twice as fast and eventually change colors too, keep one.
The second camera stopped recording, come on, sorry, yeah, so add a little variation to your colors. When you touch the stars, you use the yellows, the greens, even a light blue or something, it's really good, it's subtle. effect, but it's a good quality when it comes to adding the stars, so one of the questions I got in the comments is whether or not my colored pencil scraping technique would work, in this scenario, and if you're not familiar with that technique. I would point you to my recent colored pencil fall landscape. I did that technique at the end of that video, but I would have to say no and the reason I say no is because the reason I say no is because, because of the way the pigments lay down on the paper, I wouldn't want to try to press that down with a spoon because I'd be afraid of damaging the teeth of the paper, so that's fine. of the stars on the outside um I like them quite a bit I don't want too many uh but I'm going to group them into these small groups of uh space gas I guess you call it what things in the galaxy are coming out.
I'm using yellow and green right now, so I'm not even using white, but I'm just going to tap and group those stars more densely, these clouds here, okay, I'm going to change these colors and let's make a blue and I'm going to change it back to white, a blue and the white. I'm going to make the blue on the darker points and I'm going to make the white on the lighter points. Make sure you use a sharp tip. corner uh yeah, those referring to my amdex prowess in the comments yeah, I'm an exterus uh, recently, well, I don't know how recent, I guess I can say it was, but um, I did.
I made a portrait where I drew. the portrait with both hands simultaneously uh and it was fun, it was a fun moment, in fact, I also finished the portrait faster than if I did it with just one hand, uh no, there won't be an astronaut in this photo. I would just know that things can be I'll put a moon I'll put a moon in the picture, okay, now I think that's fine with the stars, but I want to add some bright ones, so I'm just going to go in here and add some brighter stars in , you know, random locations.
I'm just trying to create, trying to create kind of little specks with the corner. The corner isn't really working very well, getting strange shapes. I feel like I'm there. needs to be, let's see here. I'm going to take this light green and I have no idea how well it will work. This is a total gamble, so let's move on. I feel like there's a shooting star somewhere here. Don't know. I think it's right here. I'm going to create one thing and brush it back, I'll see that it didn't work, maybe if I just create a line, yeah, I think it works, but I need a little bit, I need a little bit of white. there, I think it's good to start filming, okay, so let's add a moon.
Now I have this, I have this and I want to use one of the. I think one of the problems is that this part here is getting too mixed in, um, so. I'm going to use let's see here. I'm going to use my white pencil. In fact, let me highlight that shooting star a little more. Look, I think that's a good size for a moon. Make sure you have this on the right side. I'm going to come in here with my white Pit pencil and I'm going to create a half moon here, there we go, there's part of the Moon.
I'm going to use the pencil to sneak up on that. border a little bit and I'm not going to color it all in because I want like those random variations that you get on the moon and let's see here I have a little bit of this blue here with my pencil I'm just going to go in here, add a little bit of blue and this will blend out and It will fade a little into the sky. I hope I can achieve it. I've never tried it before. Let's see here, so I want to use a little bit of this dark blue here and zoom in a little bit.
I want my moon to be a greener color so I'm going to take that green color that I have that I used and I just touched it up a little bit and this is starting to look more like a planet so maybe I should add yeah I'm going to add some of this blue and I'm going to tone it down a little bit because I want it to be a moon, not a planet, but I want it will fade fade I might have to go back and add some stars here, how's that for a moon? I think it needs some highlighting, so I'm going to try to do that.
With this here it doesn't feel very Mooney is that a word Mooney should tell me what you think of the weak cloud of the Moon in front of the Moon. I think I can try it. I need something a little easier to put together. I have grabbed a stump. I really think this will help, okay that's not working right now. I feel like I need a little more highlight, it just needs a little bit of texture, that's what it is, add some texture to it, okay, and for a cloud, for a cloud, um, so I'm. I'm just going to go out on a limb and add, I don't know, some blue cloud here and here, and I need to highlight it with a little bit of green and I'll use a little bit of that charcoal gray, uh, just to use it. to desaturate it a little bit and then blur it out, I'll have to go back and add some stars in there, but how come for this the planet has some clouds in front of it?
Now I think I still need some blue. clouds, we're going to blend that right, so we're going to add some of those stars that I lost and I'm going to use my pencil one more time, okay, I'm not going to use my pencil, I'm going to have to pick it. Later, I will use this. That pencil got crooked. I don't know, it was a mistake when I picked it up. There we get a little brighter on the edge. And then a few more stars too. here I lost, okay, I think it's better now that we have a beautiful moon in the sky, I still don't like my shooting star, here we go, that's better for the shooting star a little brighter, so that's it for the space scene.
What I'm going to do now is create the silhouette, um, and now I'm going to get the pure black, the actual pastel black, and I'm going to use the corner that I like to use the corner. I feel like I have a lot of control there and I'm just going to come in here and I want these lines to be as crisp as possible and this will pretty much finish this piece. and I'm going to create some kind of hill, there doesn't need to be a lot of detail about what you're doing to the ground here, but I want to cover it completely with black and this hill goes down and it's like Just yeah, this is how I see it and I just color everything that is there.
Now that I've used half of the rest of the black that I have, I'm going to go in here and be very careful with my edges. I want to preserve my Edge where I drew it, so I'm going to avoid blending it and if you have extra dust in there, just ignore it, pretend it doesn't exist because when you pick this up, all that extra dust will fall out and it won't be a problem anymore, but you can see that because we didn't use black on the actual background, the black for the silhouette shows up a lot, that's exactly what we wanted, that's what we really wanted. obvious contrast, so there's still some bits down here of the paper showing through, so I'm going to take my black again and just place the edge right where the tape is and blend it well so it's pretty black now.
We're going to use the black pencil if I can keep it in my hand and we're just going to draw some dead trees and things coming out of the ground, so we're just going to add some. some things appear and you don't know, don't be too picky, don't be too precise, just add some jagged wavy lines and make a little bit thicker side at the base and it will look a pretty tree, as I can promise. I'm telling you I'm not doing anything really precise by any means, just add some kind of grassy stuff if you want a random stick to appear, maybe over here and then you know, maybe a smaller bush here and a tree over there. here, just irregular, wavy lines, that's all.
I'm not doing anything precise at all and, uh, a taller tree here like this, you can't really mess this up, so just add some shorter branches to the tree and we'll add some leaves to it and then maybe you know, maybe some kind of tree dead and some grass, just adding a little bit of detail, just adding some variation to that line so it's not flat and boring. and where you use the pencil, you know, just get rid of that a little bit and we're going to take our black again, so I'm going to take the black and I'm going to use the flat end. and I'm just going to press down on the paper and create some leaves, just kind of a leaf effect silhouette, uh, on the tree branches and I'm just pressing down and then lifting up like this, that's what I'm doing and because Because it's not perfect, it creates a nice kind of fluffy leaf texture and that's what we're going to use for the leaves on our trees.
Creates a nice texture. Sorry, sorry, it keeps telling me it stopped automatically, let's see if. It does it again, okay, so it seems to be working. I'm going to continue hitting some leaves and doing it at the end of some of my branches, not all of it. I don't want the tree to show, you know? like it's full, it gives it a dead feeling and where the leaves are denser, you can touch it with your finger and mix it up, but you want to keep it very sporadic and we'll add some, just a few. leaves here on these dead trees there we go and the last thing we're going to do is add a little let me sharpen this pencil real quick if I can so let's add a little a standing on top uh yeah I got the message thanks Susan bylet me know, okay, so there will be a little standing here and the easiest way to do this is to draw a stick figure, just draw a stick figure to make it go away. he's going to be this tall there's his little head we're going to keep this super simple just draw a stick figure we're going to draw a line not exactly straight down but more like straight down just a slight angle and then we're going to open it up and add a leg that's going to go right in the middle and we're going to go back up to where the head meets that line and we're just going to give it a little bit of a little bit of shoulder, just a little bit of shoulder and then we're going to block it out and narrow it down towards the waist just like that. so and now it's all about subtlety, so just thicken up some of the areas. and an arm on one side CU.
There doesn't need to be a lot of detail for this guy, so if you add the right thickness to his legs and arms then he will look like a human, I think I did that. his head is a little big so I had to thicken it up a little and there you have it, it's another piece of cake done and complete so I'm hoping to try and clean my hands a little. That this

tutorial

was a little helpful if you are new to cakes or if you just like to enjoy watching me work, that will be it for this piece of cake, so if you have any suggestions let me know in the comments for another piece of cake. what would you like me to do, I'll probably do another one, I'll probably do another Cape landscape next week or something, so stay tuned for the next live stream.
If you want more access to my live broadcasts, you can support me. Send me over to Patreon, where I do an additional weekly live tutorial, I also make colored pencils, acrylic, and all other mediums, so, yeah, that's how you can support my channel, or you can do the Super Chat you see on the lower. of the screen and um that's going to be it for this live stream so I hope you enjoyed it and thank you for coming and watching and yeah I also do live streams every Monday on art topics or I just sit and draw and You can ask me questions about anything, so if you have any questions you would like me to answer related to art or anything, feel free to let me know and I will try to answer them and see you next time, take care. peace

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